What is exactly… a Gas Giant?

486 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

I searched and it says it’s a planet composed of solely gas, like helium or hydrogen, but… it is a planet.

​

What’s exactly then? Can you send a space shuttle and land on a gas giant, like Saturn and Jupiter or they are merely intangible and you can actually… go through them?

​

If so, we could merely get on their moons, like Europa or Io, but not actually go to those planets.

​

How does it exactly work?

In: Planetary Science

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They’re just planets made out of gas. Planets don’t need to be made out of rock. The gas giants might have a bit of rock at the very core, but the vast majority of their mass is gas. You can’t land on one, rather you’d sink until you either reached equilibrium pressure, or were crushed long before then.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.